HSBC Tower (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, 1984_construction

400-foot, 29-story modernist office building completed in 1984. Designed by Eli Attia Architects for the Republic National Bank, the building is among the most expensive, on a per-foot basis, in the city's history. The building was originally planned as part of a project consisting of two identical towers facing one another on either side of the avenue to create a major gateway to lower Fifth Avenue. It structurally incorporates three pre-existing buildings into the new tower, one of which served as the original headquarters for Republic National Bank of New York, and wraps around the landmarked Knox Building at the northeast corner, to which it is joined.

The dramatically stepped north façade creates the illusion of curling into pleats and furling like a sail in the wind. The curtain wall on this facade consists of green-tinted glass with horizontal grey metal spandrel bands. It begins as flat on the eastern edge, then begins a series of very small incremental steps toward the north to just past the halfway point of the facade. Following a brief flat section behind and above the west end of the Knox Building, a series of five even sawtooth corners carries the facade out to the streetwall where a narrow strip of facade with a different curtain wall (bronze tinted glass in tall, narrow panes and thin metal mullions - six panes wide) abuts the adjoining building to the west. Both this narrow strip of facade and the sawtooth corners stepping up to it sit above a double-height entry with infill of a glass wall framed by bright white panels around the edges, narrower at the left side. The entrance consists of two glass revolving doors flanked by regular glass doors, covered by a metal canopy suspended from the glass wall.

The west, south, and east facades of the tower are clad in the same bronze glass curtain wall as the narrow strip at the east edge of the north facade, rising straight up to a flat roof. On the east facade, the tower is slightly set-back, sprouting from an 8-story base of grey-brown polished granite with large, square, dark-tinted windows. On the east facade, the base totals 12 bays wide, with the eight southern bays reaching the full height of the 8th floor, and then stair-stepping down one floor at each bay to the north, unveiling the glass curtain wall of the tower behind. The northernmost bay of this base is four floors tall, and then drops away completely, leaving a roughly 1-bay-wide gap between the base and the corner of the Knox Building at the north end. Behind this gap, landscaped with a variety of planting at the ground, the tower's curtain wall extends down to the ground, with a narrow 10-story strip of the north-face curtain wall (green glass and grey spandrels) serving as a connector to the Knox Building. The ground floor of the base is double-height, with plate-glass show-windows and entrances in most of the bays on the east elevation. The exception is the 8th bay from the south, which is filled by a panel of polished black granite inset with a decorative bronze doorway panel. Attached above each bay of the ground floor are ornamental buttons of green circles outlined in gold, with gold centers. At the windows above, a horizontal bar separates the lower third of the windows from the top portions.

On the south elevation, the bays of the base each have windows grouped into pairs. The ground floor's show-windows continue most of the way along the facade, over to the western three bays, which have freight entrances. The south elevation spans a total of nine of these double bays. Set back above the southern part of the base (the six southernmost bays), is a short 2-story section of curtain-wall cladding matching the main tower; it rises vertically on the east side, but is angled back on the south elevation, rising an extra floor above the westernmost bay. These angled sections end is a lower roof, with the main tower rising from the northern part of the base.

It was principally occupied by the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation. Under this skyscraper is HSBC's main gold vault in America, where billions of dollars worth of gold is stored for its clients. The building was sold in 2010, but HSBC Bank continued to lease space.

The ground floor is occupied by a Staples office supply store, and Panera Bread restaurant, in addition to HSBC Bank. It underwent interior renovations in 2011 by Studios Architects for IDB Property & Building Corp.

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